Lisa Hilton

Italy’s apathetic attitude towards corruption

Another day, another Berlusconi outrage. Writing on the “embarrassment” Silvio Berlusconi must have felt at having received the news of David Mills’s conviction for bribery whilst in conference with Nancy Pelosi, the British press have rather touchingly missed the point. The news is not that Mills has been found guilty, nor that due to Italy’s statute of limitations law he will be unlikely to serve a single day of his sentence, nor that Berlusconi’s government have exempted their leader from trial, nor yet that the “Alfano lodo” is likely to be further manipulated to prevent the judicial conclusion in the Mills case from being permitted as evidence in any future trial of the Italian premier, despite claims of its being unconstitutional.

The news is that no-one cares. Silvio has not been even momentarily inconvenienced.

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